Session ID:

Prepared by:

Maximize a 24 X 7 Shared

Services Global Operation

With Oracle E-Business Suite

#10488

@eprentise

Helene Abrams

CEO

eprentise, LLC

2

eprentise Can… …So Our Customers Can:

Consolidate Multiple EBS

Instances

Change Underlying Structures

and Configurations

Chart of Accounts,

Other Flexfields

Inventory

Organizations

Operating Groups,

Legal Entities, Ledgers

Calendars

Costing Methods

Resolve Duplicates, Change

Sequences, IDs

Separate Data for a

Divestiture

: Transformation Software for E-Business Suite

Reduce Operating Costs and

Increase Efficiencies

Shared Services

Data Centers

Adapt to Change

Align with New Business

Initiatives

Mergers, Acquisitions,

Divestitures

Pattern-Based Strategies

• Make ERP an Adaptive

Technology

Avoid a Reimplementation

Reduce Complexity and Control Risk

Improve Business Continuity, Service

Quality and Compliance

Establish Data Quality Standards and

a Single Source of Truth

Company Overview: Established 2007 l Helene Abrams, CEO

Learning Objectives

After this session you will be able to:

Objective 1: Explain the mechanics of running a

single global instance of Oracle E-Business Suite.

Objective 2: Detail the common business processes

and how they are implemented.

Objective 3: Explain how a global company can apply

patches and perform maintenance in a very short

cutover window.

3

Agenda

Introduction

Globalization Processing

• Incentives and Drivers for Corporate Globalization

• Challenges Around People, Process, and Technology

in a Globalized Environment

• Advantages of Single-Instance-Single-COA

Globalization Best of Breed – A Case Study on Experian

• Global Finance Transformation

• Supporting Change with a Global Instance of EBS

• Experian’s People, Process, and Technology

• Pain Points, Mitigation, and Lessons Learned

4

Information Systems in a Growing

Company

• Information (data) follows the fundamental

law of entropy

• An organization’s complex IT systems like E-

Business Suite (EBS) become more complex as

a company grows

• Companies evolve

• The larger the organization, the more likely it is

for operational or reporting errors to cause major

problems due to a lack of alignment between

ERP systems and business process changes

that have occurred.

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The Problems

• Common business functions develop different

processes due to heavy corporate growth – Generally due to lack of governance policies and procedures or

poor administration of them

– Redundant processes and data have high costs in terms of both

time and additional people resources

– When a company strategically eliminates redundant processes

and data, their use of redundant hardware diminishes, the quality

and timeliness of business information improves, and its people

are able to collaborate in a more streamlined manner

• IT has a significant impact on the bottom line

because operating, maintaining, and synchronizing

an array of E-Business Suite instances, charts of

accounts, calendars, and other configuration items

is time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone

6

Global Scaling And Evolution

Incentives and drivers for getting to a single, global

instance

Incentives & Drivers of Global Operations

• Consolidate repetitive data-centric processes

to support migration to a shared services

center or a centralized data center

• Generate financial reports directly from the

system of record

• Reduce operating and maintenance costs to

improve the bottom line

• Create a single source of truth to improve

business processes and business intelligence

• Enable revenue optimization whenever and

wherever possible to improve the top line

• Capitalize on enterprise-wide synergies to

leverage purchasing and to better understand

customers

• Obtain access to new markets and the

opportunity to scale the business

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Business Process Standardization

Key components to

successfully managing

change on a global scale

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Governance

• Effective management of shared enterprise assets is necessary for an effective global strategy – Collaboration

– Implementation of effective controls

• Idea of the “benevolent dictatorship” 1) There can be no wavering about where the

finish line is placed (a single global instance)

2) Anything less than success or short of completion is not acceptable (no special exceptions)

3) Obstructionism is not tolerated

10

Training and Communication

• Effective globalization training has to take a more

personalized approach that seeks buy-in along with

providing information

– New skills

– New processes

– New functionality

– New regulations

• A training manual alone is not enough to be

effective

11

Process Standardization

The backbone of a globalization effort is the understanding that business processes are intrinsically linked and not confined to departmental, geographic, or organizational boundaries.

• Shared services center as a way to standardize on common “global” processes such as:

– Corporate treasury

– Invoice processing

– Receivables processing

– Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance

– Account maintenance

– Corporate reporting

– Expense processing

– HR maintenance

Costa Mesa Kolkata

Nottingham

São Paulo

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Building a Globalization Strategy

• Achieving a global EBS platform relies on:

– An ability to access quality information

– Recognizing the role of technology in the successful

integration of the enterprise

– Laying the groundwork for different parts of the

business to become integrated with core business

processes and decision-making.

• Though IT is core to enabling a global ERP, it is

the human component – leadership,

communication, and governance – that drives

its success and delivers results.

13

Experian Globalization Process

Operating Principles of Experian’s Global

Financial Shared Services Center (GSSC)

• Standard processes and controls will be

implemented across the globe

• Processes will be consolidated where possible

• Local legal requirements will be incorporated to all

processes

• SSC should undertake as much processing work as

possible

• Financial models should include the cost of

Oracle software and the cost of migrating to the SSC

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Experian’s Shared Services Strategy

• Reduce costs and improve efficiency

– Leveraged low cost locations and standardized on global business processes

– Eliminated redundant efforts that were common when many corporate procedures such as month-end close and expense reimbursement were regionalized

• Create additional capacity for growth

– Reduced operational complexity

– Opportunity to capitalize on Experian’s connection to a diminished number of entities (financial institutions, bank accounts, vendors, etc.)

– Made the roll out of global process automation a realistic opportunity

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• Global coverage of some processes only (AP, Travel expenses etc)

• Opportunities to take on similar activities in other countries / regions

• Regional delivery of all processes

• Opportunities to centralise key processes globally

• Scope currently limited to “traditional” routine transaction processing activities

• Opportunity to take on additional more complex activities

Experian – Global Finance Shared

Services

Finance Process Kuala Lumpur Nottingham Santiago

Accounts payable and travel expenses

Accounts receivable and credit collections

excl. Norway Costa Mesa

General ledger In-country UK only

Payroll outsourced UK only Costa Mesa

Billing some UK/I Business units

Fixed assets and depreciation

Intercompany processing and reconciliation

Cash management / bank reconciliations

Costa Mesa

Current Transaction Processing Scope

16

Experian – Global HCM Services

HCM Process Costa Mesa

(Americas)

Nottingham (UK / EMEA)

Other

Core Human Resources

Employee Self Service

OTL UK only

Payroll NA Only UK only Outsourced

Compensation Work Bench NA

Adv Benefits Outsourced

Talent Acquisition NA

Current Transaction Processing Scope

• Global coverage of some processes only (Core HR and Self Service)

• Opportunities to take on similar activities in other countries / regions

• Regional delivery of all processes

• Resources aligned to regional headquarter offices

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Technology

• Four main technology issues surrounding

globalization:

– Availability

– Access/Security

– Performance

– Functionality

• E-Business Suite Release 12 is designed to

support a global enterprise within a single

instance, and it has several features that

enable sharing of data and facilitate the

globalization effort.

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A Single, Global Instance

• A single global instance means:

– Higher volumes

– Longer batch processing

time windows

– More network traffic

– Longer backup cycles

– Longer test cycles

• BUT, having several instances and systems

multiplies the cost (licenses, hardware, staff) and

introduces a different complexity in reconciling and

synthesizing corporate information.

Substantial

infrastructure

expenditures

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A Single, Global Chart of Accounts

• R12 includes major advances in its

accounting engine

– Single engine manages all posting

activities into GL

– Subledger accounting

• Other new features provide extended

functionality, making it simpler to perform

financial consolidation as well as to

remain in compliance with statutory and

regulatory requirements

– Primary and Secondary ledgers

– Ledger sets

• A single chart of accounts enables

companies to take full advantage of these

new R12 features.

Accounting policies are

standardized across the

entire enterprise

Data remains consistent

and has full drill-down and

roll-up capability,

auditability, and visibility

into all of the activity for the

entire ledger set

Conversions not required

for data warehouse

queries

Facilitates the movement

to a shared service center

Increases the level of

enterprise governance and

control of new code

combinations

20

Technology - Availability

• Prearranged level of operational performance

during a period of time

– Service level agreement or “three nines”/”five nines”

– To a user, it means the ability of the user community

to access the system

– Scheduled vs. Unscheduled downtime

• Maintenance

• Patches, configuration changes, etc. (reboot required)

• Hardware/software failure

• Environment anomaly

22

Experian – Three Types of Availability

• Support – Break-fix and statutory/critical patches to EBS

– 3-tier service level agreement (SLA) • Each tier corresponds to the estimated amount of resources and time

required to resolve issue

• Pre-determined acceptable amount of scheduled downtime

• Change request – Simple change

• Requires less than ten support days to implement (e.g. minor functionality modifications)

• Included as part of existing SLA, regression testing not required

– Planned change • Requires more than ten days (e.g. major development, acquisitions, projects,

upgrades, etc.)

• Release management – Regular updates to system

– Large portion of planned downtime • Better control of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Regression Test Bed

(RTB) cycles to enhance quality and reliability of releases

• Optimal use of environment and DBA resources – close coordination with DBA and infrastructure teams

• Central coordination of release and environment management activities to improve process efficiency

23

Technology, Continued

• Access/security

– Governance and processes

• Performance

– Higher volumes and processing time windows

• Functionality

– EBS

• Ledgers, ledger sets, MOAC, accounting engine

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Experian Technology Issues / Pain Points

Issues Faced Mitigations

Availability / Support

Maintaining 24x7

uptime

Global Agreement made to “Planned” hours of operations and

set hours for outages

Substantive PRODUCTION and DR infrastructure housed /

maintained in data centers

Global Support / Help

Desk Presence

(24x7 support)

Co-Located regional support teams in major regional centers

Follow the sun; Multi-Shore support locations (Americas /

Europe / India)

Single Global Incident tracking system (USD)

Performance:

Concurrent Request

Monitoring

Centralized recurring jobs (interfaces/reports etc…) to a

standardized CONCJOB user –monitored by Global Support

Support is best qualified to manage ConcMgr usage, capacity, and

job conflicts

Distribute business critical assignments to key business user

Made the business accountable for

Goal is to move all to defined Monitoring group, use automated

monitoring tool

25

Experian Technology Issues / Pain Points

Issues Faced Mitigations

Access / Security

Configuration Access: Conflicts occur on what is an

“allowable” system change

vs. what types may be

intrusive, and who can

implement

Changed evaluated between GPO / SME’s,

prioritized and characterized. Potential

intrusive change requires UAT and Regression

Testing activity (include SM signoff)

Created defined EBS “SuperUser”

responsibilities for targeted deployment

EBS Applications

Responsibility Growth

(A runaway train): Combination of 30+ countries, 4

languages, and 5 major

business threads

This is still a Work in Progress

Assigned GPO and SME resources to subject

areas

Leveraging Oracle GRC functionality to identify

potential responsibility candidates

Retrofitting / consolidating responsibilities based on

SCC use or general user designation

26

Globalization Best-of-breed

A Case Study on Global Finance Transformation and

Operations at Experian

Experian – Global Finance

Transformation

• Single Global Instance of Oracle EBS R12

• Global Chart of Accounts

• Standard Finance Processes

• Global Finance Shared Services Organisation

• Three regional Finance Shared Service Centres

• Global Hyperion EPM & OBIEE fully integrated with EBS

• Global Finance Center of Excellence (COE)

Project Gemstone Goals

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Experian – Global Finance

Transformation

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

US

UK France

Ireland

Oracle R12

Spain

Hong Kong

Ireland

Australia

N.Zealand*

Italy

Denmark

Norway

Sweden*

Finland*

Estonia*

India

France

Japan

China

Korea

Malaysia

Singapore

US UK

S.Africa Russia*

Morocco*

Netherlands

Germany

Austria

N.Zealand**

Sweden**

Estonia**

Bulgaria

Greece

Monaco

Belgium

Brazil

Mexico

Argentina

Turkey

UK Instance - Oracle 11i

US Instance - Oracle 11i

Oracle 11i

"UNIFY" Instance Single Global Instance

Oracle R12.0.6

US & UK migrated to

"UNIFY" instance

* GL Module Only

** Additional modules

Canada

Chile Costa Rica

Gemstone

Start

Gemstone

Go-live

• 3 EBS instances converged into

a Single Global Instance

• Global COA / Processes

• Regional Shared Service

Centers processing

• Ongoing global roll out

29

Experian – Global Finance

Transformation

Core Financials Other HR & Payroll

Purchasing Order Management HRMS

I-Procurement Advanced Pricing Self Service HR

Payables Service Contracts Passive Payroll

Receivables Project Billing Payroll

Advanced Collections

Time & Labour Advanced Benefits

General Ledger AME Absence Management

Fixed Assets BRM Billing * I-Recruitment

Cash Management Oracle GRC

AGIS

I-Expenses

Note: Not all modules used by all countries

Oracle EBS – Modules implemented and planned *

30

Experian – Global Finance

Transformation

EPM OBIEE Planned

Hyperion Financial Management (HFM)

General Ledger Analytics Workforce Planning

Hyperion Essbase Payables Analytics CapEx Planning

Hyperion Planning Receivables Analytics OBIEE

Dashboards

Data Relationship Management (DRM)

Procurement and Spend Analytics (Purchasing,

Requisitions, Internet Expenes) Noetix

Financial Data Quality Management (FDQM)

Supplier Performance Analytics(Purchasing, AP)

Hyperion Shared Services

Financial Reporting Studio

Smartview

Workspace

EPM/OBIEE – Modules implemented and planned

31

GCS Support – Then and Now (an Iterative Process)

3 Regional EBS instances.

Two located in UK, one

located in USA.

2 Regional support areas

Functional / Development

teams in each location

Break fix team in each

location

Different support models in

place

Knowledge base

decentralized

3 different EBS

infrastructure footprints

Duplicated DBA teams

Strategy and Support

leadership silo’d and

duplicated

Consolidation project to move

from 3 EBS to single global

instance, infrastructure

located in UK

Outsourced Break/Fix support

to support partner (TCS)

Experian Development FTE’s

reduced

Support presence included 3rd

shore (offshore center in

Kolkata, India).of support to a

24x7 model

Support management

centralized, global incident

system implemented

Built out EBS Regression Test

Bed platform

Began formal Release Mgmt

process to include instance

and DBA resource utilization

management

Outsourced Support

Model transitions to

Service Level

Agreement (SLA)

basis

Formal Change

Process put into

effect –

simple change < 10

days,

Planned change > 10

days

Release Management

process furthered

Instance refresh

policy established

Configuration Mgmt

process furthered,

began use of

automation tool (i-

setup)

EBS Support (Prior to Gemstone)

EBS Support (Gemstone Go Live)

EBS Support / Strategy (Gemstone 2yrs old)

32

Global Instance: Business / GCS

Interaction

Experian Finance COE GPO’s, Finance Process , Acctg Data

Governance

Experian Business Finance and HR

Experian Global HRIS GPO’s, HCM Processes, HR Data

Governance

GCS SMEs aligned with Business Partners

Break / Fix,

Statutory or

RUPs

Small Change

( <10 days

effort)

Tactical/Strategic

Planned Change

(Projects >10 day)

Flex Delivery

Team Release Mgmt

Support

Corporate Systems

Release Cycles

Projectized

work

Regression

Testing

Incidents

Prioritization and

Requirement

33

CR Management Process

Business

Users

Send the CR

details to GPO

Impact Assessment

by SME/Proj Team

Effort Approved

& Prioritized

by GPOs

Delivered by

SM team

(Effort < 10 PD)

End

GPO raise Change

Request in USD

Delivered by

Project team

(Effort > 10 PD)

Effort < 10 PD

Y

N

34

Process Collaboration – How Do We

Work Together?

Process Collaboration Matrix Business Partners Global Corporate Systems

Business Process Process Owner Process Sponsor GCS Process

Partner / SME

GCS Technology

Partner

Bu

sin

ess In

tellig

en

ce

:

Da

ta In

teg

ratio

n / M

as

ter D

ata

Ma

na

gem

en

t / Mid

dle

ware

:

Da

ta W

are

ho

us

e / D

ata

De

sig

n A

uth

ority

:

Order to Invoice NA: TBD NA: TBD GCS SME

LATAM: TBD LATAM: TBD GCS SME

UK&I / EMEA: TBD UK&I / EMEA: TBD GCS SME

APAC: TBD APAC: TBD GCS SME

Invoice to Cash TBD TBD GCS SME

Recruit to Retire NA: TBD TBD GCS SME

LATAM: TBD TBD GCS SME

UK&I / EMEA: TBD TBD GCS SME

APAC: TBD TBD GCS SME

Purchase to Pay TBD TBD GCS SME

Record to Report TBD TBD GCS SME

GRC TBD TBD GCS SME

Enterprise

Performance

Management

TBD TBD TBD

35

Questions? Comments?

36

THANK YOU

Helene Abrams

CEO

habrams@eprentise.com

eprentise, LLC www.eprentise.com

Accelerating the time for change in

Oracle E-Business Suite

Visit eprentise at booth 1423!

37

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